...

And that is a very healthy way to produce Nic for the economy and against the inflation...

Yes Saha, you are right.

However, I am not a big producer. Only a small guy that made a few nics that way to to start it's production, and I got *** by this punishment. I am based in ICS Alpha, refinery and Factory are both level 1. I lost 10 time more than I ever gain.

I'm glad I still have some bots to sell in my hangar, because I don't have nic anymore, and we can no-longer do level 1 transport missions without loosing reputation. (which is bad, as I need a high reputation for production.)

Plus... well...  39 bots, on a 3 month period since release... doesn't that feel ridiculous?

Please CRY EVEN MORE .

Try to twist the truth in every possible way to try to convince people that you are poor victims.

The usual tools of cheaters and frauds.

Attacking the exploiters isn't productive.

Taking away the lesson that working in the spirit of the mechanics is more important than pointing fingers.

The Perpetuum game community is just too small for 'Malicious Compliance' with the rule set.

do i hear now here the noble agents that where running the market with their cheated NIC, for the sake of the alpha miners, which wouldn't be able to sell their ore and get their hands on hat NIC.

and because they did so well on gaining NIC with their savely mined ore, the alpha-ore deposits got nerfed so hard.

... and pvp roams will get more mining bots of the other PvP factions to shoot at.
on alpha island mining will be hard, as they have to compete with the countless alpha miners there that want to sell their ore.

I luv comments like this...it shows that despite 6.5 million years of hominid evolution, that many people still do not know how to use a brain.

Here are the facts people:
A) Devs put in an insuance system, that had short term(16 days at max skill) life, and payouts that actually allowed you to make significantly more than the actual cost to build the bot.

B) Before the announcement that insurance was being turned off, there was no statement on the forums, in the EULA, in the game description of insurance, no where in game or out that this was designated an exploit or a fraud.  People, GMs and Devs, when asked in the past, stated that it is working as intended.

C) Devs were informed, from multiple sources, how this system potentially was "broken", and took no action.

In RL, when you do a Root Cause analysis, you start off with with:

1) What is the issue?
2) What procedure, standard, regulation, etc., that it violates

If you find that there is no regulatory or procedural requirement that the issue violates, you implement corrective action by creating a new requirement to cover the issue.  You cannot at that time claim it is a violation of a requirement, only that your system did not anticipate the need for control of something that at the time was not an issue.

There was not exploit or fraud.  Because there was no rule / requirement / procedure that it violated.  There was no hack, becuase someone did not use out of game mechanics to affect in game performance.  The only ones that are at fault here are the Devs, everything else was done according to the at the time published game rules and functionality.  Corrective Action at this point would be to declare it an exploit, create a mechanic to prevent it, and publish it in an easily referable source, such as an Exploit Forum or list, and state from this point forward, it is not allowed.  To retroactively punish people for something that was not a violation prior to that point is inherently wrong, logically, and ethically.

For the systematic insurance frauders
---
Just because something isn't specifically mentioned as a violation does not mean it is a legitimate way to play the game. By that logic, the developers would have to anticipate every exploit possible in a video game and specifically prohibit its use.

Example:
Players are not allowed to:
speedhack, remove entire tiles of ore in one cycle, hack into the game code, go swimming in the ocean, fly to the stratosphere as a faster method of travel, train roaming packs into an intrusion event from another island, delete another player's bids off the market, remove other people from general/trade/help/recruit chat, etc, etc etc.

I don't agree with the sudden policing action with zero warning either, but to claim that insurance frauding wasn't obviously a gray area is silly.

For the "Honorable Mentions" who didn't systematically fraud
---

You are simply a casualty of PR maneuvering. It wouldn't do for the developers to only punish Infestation corporations, so they hunt out other, lesser violations to show their unbiased approach.

Sorry but nothing you said is relevant to the exploitation of a game mechanic.

It is common knowledge that exploiting a game mechanic for a personal benefit not intended to be produced by that mechanic is an exploit, and exploiting a game is against the rules.

The fact that it 'could' be done does not equate to it being 'legal' or 'not a violation' that's how game exploits work - they are an abuse of a developer oversight or program bug for personal benefit.

Noone with any experience of playing a computer game has to wonder if the mechanic that allowed money to be generated with insurance payouts is an exploit... it's obviously an exploit and exploits are against the rules.  End of story.

Anyone pleading ignorance that this was an exploit - fools no-one here.

Was the insurance mechanic balanced by Dev Alf?

No, of course not LA. You used the insurance in an unintended way. There doesnt need to be a law against this ;D These ingame/eula rules are not there for legal reasons but to ease up the process - but of course they are not needed in a game...

They should have banned you all right away - hopefully this will still come.